An eruption at Kilauea summit jolted the area with the force of a 5.4 magnitude quake and hurled an ash plume that reached 10,000 feet above sea level.

The volcano is one of the youngest and most active volcanoes in the world.

This Wednesday, June 6, 2018 photo from the U.S. Geological Survey shows Kilauea's lower East Rift Zone, showing continued fountaining of a fissure and the lava flow channel fed by it near the town of Kapoho on the island of Hawaii.

An ever-creeping wall of lava from Kilauea Volcano has engulfed two entire seaside housing tracts at the eastern tip of Hawaii's Big Island, government scientists reported on Wednesday, an area where civil defense officials said almost 280 homes once stood.

The latest estimate of property losses from Kilauea, one of the world's most active volcanoes, far surpasses the 215 structures consumed by lava during an earlier eruption cycle that began in 1983 and continued almost nonstop over three decades.

Lava from the Kilauea volcano that flowed into Kapoho Bay has created approximately 1.5km of new land.

Lava completely covered the Big Island's Vacationland neighborhood, destroying hundreds of homes and pouring into the Kapoho Bay, where it formed at least 0.8 miles of land that juts into the sea, the Associated Press reports.

The latest damage appraisal from Kilauea came moments after Governor David Ige, on a visit to Hawaii County Civil Defense headquarters in Hilo, the island's biggest city, signed a memorandum of understanding furnishing $12 million in immediate state disaster relief to the island.

Lava erupts in Leilani Estates during ongoing eruptions of the Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii, U.S., June 5, 2018.

Kim told reporters that in the last three days alone, 320 of the homes were destroyed in the coastal community of Kapoho along with all the homes in Vacationland. Most recently, a huge river of lava has engulfed two entire seaside subdivisions - Vacationland and Kapoho Beach Lots. There was no lava activity from the other fissures but fissures 24, 9, and 10 were billowing gases, scientists said. A plume of toxic volcanic lava haze, called laze, stretched for miles.

It has forced the shutdown of a geothermal energy plant that normally provides about a quarter of the island's electricity.